US President Joe Biden assured Americans on Thursday that he was cooperating fully with the investigation into the discovery of classified Obama administration documents from his personal spaces.
\nBut the US media warns that the discovery would hurt the administration\u2019s effort to hold former president Donald Trump responsible for carrying away secret documents.
\nMinutes before Mr Biden spoke at a White House event, his lawyers confirmed that they found a second set of classified documents in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware.
\n\u201cClassified material, next to your Corvette \u2014 what were you thinking?\u201d asked a journalist as Mr Biden finished his speech. Mr Biden said the documents were in a locked garage, \u201cnot sitting out in the street. My Corvette is in a locked garage\u201d.
\nHe said people knew that \u201cI take classified material seriously\u201d and assured the nation that he was cooperating fully with the investigation.
\nThe first batch of about 10 documents was discovered in November at the Penn Biden Centre, a think tank near the White House that Mr Biden was associated with. But the discovery was revealed to the public on Jan 10, when CBS broke the bombshell news, adding that the trove included some two-dozen classified documents.
\nSoon after the second discovery, the president\u2019s Special Counsel Richard Sauber said: \u201cAll but one of these documents were found in a storage space in the President\u2019s Wilmington residence garage. One document consisting of one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room.\u201d
\nThe statement said the president\u2019s lawyers discovered the second set \u201camong personal and political papers a small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings\u201d.
\nAt his White House appearance, President Biden said the documents discovered at his home will be handed over to the Department of Justice. \u201cMy lawyer has reviewed other places where documents from my time as vice president were stored, and they finished the review last night,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThey discovered a small number of documents of classified marking in storage areas and file cabinets in my home and my personal library. This was done in the case of the Biden Penn Centre. The Department of Justice was immediately notified. And the lawyers arranged for the Department of Justice to take possession of the documents,\u201d he said.
\nQuoting White House sources, the US media reported that the files discovered at these two separate locations include US intelligence memos and were related to his time as vice president under Barack Obama.
\nIn the US, access to classified documents is limited by law to people with special authorisation and only the president, the vice president and cabinet-level officials have access to them.
\nThe US media described the first discovery as a \u201cpolitical headache\u201d but the second, it noted, was a \u201cmajor embarrassment\u201d for the Biden administration, which is seeking legal action against Mr Trump on similar charges.
\nOn Aug 8, 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump\u2019s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and recovered over 13,000 government documents. Some of those documents describe the nuclear capability of a foreign government\u2019s military along with top-secret US operations.
\nBut CBS, which made the Biden discovery, said these documents did not contain nuclear or other secrets of this nature.
\nThe Washington Post noted that there were \u201ckey differences\u201d between the two cases \u201cthat could factor heavily in whether the Biden documents become a criminal matter\u201d.
\nFor instance, the Biden documents were discovered by the president\u2019s lawyers and voluntarily turned over to authorities. Mr Trump, however, only allowed access to those documents when served with a grand jury subpoena demanding their return.
\nThe New York Times noted that the revelation was \u201csure to intensify Republican attacks on the president, who has called Mr Trump irresponsible for hoarding sensitive documents at his estate in Florida\u201d.
\nCNN observed that the \u201cBiden document scandal eats away at efforts to hold Republicans accountable\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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